Why I am bad at email

By Justin

I am sorry Ethan. I am sorry Erin. I have no excuse. None.

I am horrible at email. I love receiving them. I keep them for weeks on in and read them multiple times. I just have a hard time responding. I want to have the time to put forth thoughtful responses. I want to have the time to share a piece of my life with my long distance friends. I want to have the time to make the emails flow and somewhat witty. I want to have the time to make them count.

I have the time to do these things, but it is always at 6 p.m. after work. I never seem to be in the mood to sit and compose a hello to my friends that are defending my freedoms, my friends that make me laugh and cry on the east coast, or to my friends right here in town that I never see.

So to all my friends that I never email, I am sorry. I promise the reply button is at hand and my response, thoughtful or not, is quickly behind this post.

Healthy Snacks

by Holly

I am trying to eat more healthy foods and exercise regularly, two things I don’t normally relish. Justin and I love french fries of most varieties, but particularly Jack in the Box’s ‘seasoned curly fries’ and Scotty P’s ‘cardiac fries’. (Need I say more there?) We could live on Coke (no diet, thank you) and Sonic cheeseburgers with mayo. All this to say, our clothes no longer fit. And the budget really does not allow for new ones, but maybe the point should be that we need to be more healthy. Hmmm…

So, I have a few product recommendations for you:

1). Pringles has a new variety of chips, Pringles Selects. They are smaller and thicker, with a different kind of crunch, and they come in a bag, not a can. Four flavors: Sun Dried Tomato, Parmesan Garlic, Honey Sweet Potato and Szechwan Barbecue. I am in love with these, although I have only tried the first two. Next trip to the store though, and the next two are coming home with me!

2). Kellogg’s has a new cracker called All Bran. They are little whole grain crackers similar to Wheat Thins, and they are wonderful! There are Whole Grain and Garlic varieties. They are both yummy, but if you don’t mind dragon-breath, go for the Garlic!

3). The Laughing Cow has little triangular shaped soft cheese wedges, ¾ oz size. They come in a round disc and have 8 wedges in each disc. I’ve found Original Creamy Swiss and French Onion flavors, both quite good. Ours were next to the deli meat and cheese cases.

For those of you familiar with Weight Watchers (I’m familiar but don’t pay for their services), you can have one serving of the Pringles Selects (28 chips) OR one serving of All Bran crackers (18) with one wedge of Laughing Cow cheese for 3 points, which is quite a decent snack.

So there you go. Your nutritional tips for the day. Enjoy!

And your final score is........

by Holly

So my long-awaited year-end evaluation was this morning. I was nervous of course, although I know that I do my job well, but nevertheless, someone is putting a score on your livelihood for an entire year! It went really well thankfully. My supervisor is extremely nice, easy to talk to and quite funny. So she put me at ease, we took care of the business part of it, chatted for a few minutes and then…..

That’s right. We discussed my raise. Woohoo! It was a nice one, combined with many compliments and thanks for being a team player, dedicated to ethical behavior and good business sense, and best of all, an overall valued employee. So nice to hear those words!!!

I hope you have good evaluations, good bosses and good jobs. And that includes the non-money-paying type Aimee! Hug your kids and your husband and thank him for the opportunity to be there for them each day.

An Apology, A Thank You and

by Holly

Seems we’ve been consumed by our personal lives this week and out of touch with the outside world. Sorry about the lack of comments on everyone’s blogs and the serious negligence of our own posts.

We’ve found out this week just how loved and supported we are by our family, friends and church family. I think we had an idea, but until you are the one in need, you don’t really know to what extent people will go to show you their love. Its been nice to realize that. Sorry about the generalities- not anything that needs the public eye.


Do all of you experience the yearly performance evaluation? Its that time of year for me, and although I know I do my job well, the anxiety is there nonetheless. It should be coming up in the next couple of weeks, so I’m trying to just keep plugging along and not let it preoccupy my time and mind, but its still there.

On a similar note, I came in this morning to an email informing me that I have been placed on a task that only one other person in the department has access to. Without getting into the mundane details of Medical Reviewer responsibilities, I’ll just say that this is a huge honor and makes me realize that I have done something to please my supervisor. With the nature of this responsibility, I feel sure they were looking mostly for professionalism in conduct. What a compliment!
Now if we could start off every Monday morning with that kind of lift, the week might seem a little shorter! Ha!